I am at wits end and I am going back and forth back and forth on what to do. All I do know is I do not want to knock my little pelco's brains out.

First things first I have approx. a two and a half inch pelco and growing fast. He used to be a tiny little bugger. It loves to hide in the dragon I got from petsmart and already has killed one minnow. Circle of life thing because when I came back said fish was gone and never seen from again. 0_o

For nearly a week now I have not seen heads or tails of my pelco. Which is odd since he's usually harassing the other fish. I did a full clean of my tank and even knocked over my dragon. No pelco. I refilled the tank no pelco. Then my dumb butt dropped the hood into the tank and well needless to say caused havoc in my tank (thank god not plugged in).

I picked up my dragon out of the tank nothing fell out. I turned it to the side and herd a thunk. concerned I returned the dragon to the water on it's side then tipped it up right. I carefully repeated in the water to see if anything came out. Nothing did. But like I said above I have no desire to knock my pelco's brains out if he is still alive.

It's been a week and I put a algae pellet under the dragon. Even put in check the goldfish that tried to steal it. Should I just leave it a bit longer or try harder to see if I have a dead pelco in the dragon. I tried to reach up in it but couldn't feel anything... Maybe he got himself stuck?

Pretty certain no; especially personally seeing how fast he took down a minnow. And the dragon decoration usually does not go thunk when tipped so literally that's the option open. Though I do have one remaining minnow and one goldfish even with a corpse the pelco would be to big for them to make him quickly disappear. As for jumping out of the tank; never saw a pelco jump but both my minnow and my goldfish have proved it's pretty anti-jump proof.

So now I am caught between:
Is he in the dragon?
If he is in the dragon how can I see if he's alive or not without giving him brain damage?
If he's not alive how long can I leave him in the tank before ew?
If he's not in the dragon where in blue tarnations is he? Did he just pulled a magic trick?

Ole is can and will jump. They do it if water conditions are bad, but I don't think this happened. Sad to say I think he died in the dragon. Propyl got stuck in it. I would pull the dragon out and try to make the hole bigger, and try to get him out.

Well I never thought about a Q-Tip and reaching in there. I carefully took out my dragon tipped it on it's side and reached in the mouth with a Q tip and my dragon gave birth to a POed pelco. 0_o Even completely out of the water it manage to move quite fast out of the dragons behind and launch into the tank.

Now if he remains this reclusive it might be useful when I have to move the whole tank when they fumigate. Be nice if all I have to do is take the dragon out and put it in a bucket. Guess he's not as tiny as he used to be and is slowing down, but sure some grip he has there.

My plecos are the same way. I have two in my 1200 gal pond....it's starting to get colder out and I need to bring them inside...but I can't catch them! They hide under the waterfall rocks where I can't get to them without diving under the water with goggles, a flashlight and a net lol. Mine are around 7 inches now, I think. And they are FAST!!